http://pathogenomics.bham.ac.uk/blog/2013/03/a-chat-with-oxford-nanopores-clive-brown-at-agbt-2013[/url])
“We didn’t even know that long reads were so important to people until after that AGBT presentation.”

Waaaaaa we made promises we couldn't keep to get attention and funding...and now people expect us to keep them!

<tiny violin playing>

Seriously though, having been through the bring up of a single molecule sequencer...if the CTO is opining in a bar to a blogger about improving consensus accuracy by throwing in multiple types of pores...they are a LONG way from finalizing a chemistry, let alone stabilizing and commercializing it.

Happy to eat words. Actually I love having my pessimism proven wrong.

And I hope I'm not off Clive's list. I could do some long range clinical haplotyping pretty easily!

Seriously though, having been through the bring up of a single molecule sequencer...if the CTO is opining in a bar to a blogger about improving consensus accuracy by throwing in multiple types of pores...they are a LONG way from finalizing a chemistry, let alone stabilizing and commercializing it.

Just to note I added a clarification from Clive at the bottom of the post on that particular point...

Given that they are continuously screening new and better pores and that is in fact one of the cool things about a biological nanopore (just like other sequencing companies regularly screen for new polymerases), I didn't necessarily see that as reflective of where they are in the product development pipeline.

Given that they are continuously screening new and better pores and that is in fact one of the cool things about a biological nanopore (just like other sequencing companies regularly screen for new polymerases), I didn't necessarily see that as reflective of where they are in the product development pipeline.

No argument there.

We all hope they will stop the screening at some point and release the first product we can use.

Hopefully more than mockups with plexiglass cutouts like last time around? Unless they show something this will start turning into the mother of all vaporware. Given that there are no leaks (and there were leaks before AGBT 2012) I am not too hopeful. Will be glad to eat my words.

You have to send the MinIons in for recycle/reuse, if I remember correctly.

At the beginning of the article they mention the "flow cells" and "usb device" as being separate entities. Also, on the ONT website, they say you can dry down the flowcells before you send them back, a condition of the early access program. This, to me, seems as though the MinIon can accept single use cartridges.